


tell me, love, oh, am i pretty?

by kattyshack



Category: Gossip (2000), The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover Pairings, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Healing, Introspection, Muses, Photography, Romance, Sexual Content, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:14:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23799058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/pseuds/kattyshack
Summary: Travis never thought much about finding his artist’s muse — never thought much about needing one at all — until she shows up, out of the blue, and suddenly he’s not got a thing else on his mind.(work and chapter titles by the maine)
Relationships: Travis (Gossip)/Beth Greene
Comments: 12
Kudos: 13





	1. it’s such a pity, no one adores me yet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gutsforgarters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutsforgarters/gifts).



> a/n: so gus and i recently watched gossip (2000), and apparently we’re on a mission from god to pair beth greene with every character on norman reedus’s playbill, so, like... voilà, here we go again.

It starts, he thinks, with her hands.

Or — alright, so he doesn’t _think_ , he _knows_. Travis might have gotten a fair few things wrong about people — about _Derrick_ , but screw Derrick — in the past, but he’s always known where his own head’s at. Even when it doesn’t make a lick of sense, he can still track it back to the how and where it all started. And _this_ , this was all about her hands.

It wasn’t the first thing about her he noticed, though, so maybe it wasn’t _all_ about her hands; that’s just where it went somewhere significant.

But, alright, so the first thing was the mane of pale blonde hair, caught by the sunlight that managed to creep out of the overcast sky like the flash of his camera, sunlight that picked out the threads of gold in her hair, scraped back into a ponytail, a braid twisted through it, and even still flyaways escaped to dance around her ears and into wide blue eyes that didn’t blink much. Or maybe they did, but she kept them too downcast for him to notice.

Not that Travis would’ve tried to catch her eye, anyway. He’s got a record for striking out with pretty girls, even when loads of people still believe that rumor about Mick Jagger or whoever the hell else being his dad.

(That one does still get him free drinks when he goes out with Jones, so at least Derrick had been good for something. But it feels strange to think that, it feels _wrong_ , so for once Travis tries not to think about it too much.

(Anyway.)

He never planned to speak to this girl. He… he _wants_ to, but it’s like he said — she’s pretty. The kind of pretty he doesn’t usually go for, anyway, because he’d always been a little more inclined towards an artsy sort of girl. He thought that sort of girl might understand him, might get where he’s coming from whether he could explain himself or not; he thought they’d be on the same wavelength. 

But, nah. Hardly. Rebecca’d been enough to prove that particular theory wrong when she wouldn’t so much as give him the time of day. Which, fine. That doesn’t matter like it did when she shot him down for being nervous; it’s just another instance that goes to show he’s no good at this sort of thing, no matter the — the _archetype_ of girl, he supposes. 

The _point is_ , this girl’s not that kind of pretty. He doesn’t know her from anybody else, so he can’t know for sure, but she’s not the artist type at all — no, she’s what the artist type goes after, she’s a _muse_ , because she won’t look anybody in the eye and her cheekbones would look good sketched in charcoal.

That’s the best way he knows how to explain it, anyway.

So. Right. It doesn’t so much start with her hands — the way his eyes flick towards her every time he passes her in the courtyard outside Goodwin’s class, every Tuesday and Thursday about three-fourteen P.M., _that_ had been because of her hair at first, and that thick perfumey scent that wafted from the deep recesses of her ponytail as it swished back and forth and once or twice almost whapped him straight in the face, she’s got so much of it and it’s all so damn _pretty_ — but it’s her hands that get his camera shutter clicking.

The first time, it’s because she picks up a frog that happened to think, apparently, that the paved walkway was good a place as any to stop for a rest.

Travis is perched on a nearby wall, so low to the ground his feet are firmly planted and he doesn’t really know what the wall’s for, anyway, but to sit, because there’s nothing behind it but another aesthetic patch of emerald green lawn and a shrub and an ugly granite fountain. He’s pretty sure this particular courtyard was built for strategic use in the campus catalogue, so function’s less important. But it gives him a place to sit, so it doesn’t matter all that much to him what it’s _for_ , but it’s crossed his mind so now he’s got to _ruminate_ on it because that’s just what he does.

He raps his knuckles against the cool cement and goes back to fiddling with his camera. It’s nicer than his old one, bought on the money Derrick left him when he split. Travis doesn’t know where he went and neither does Jones. All they know is that he skipped town, and next thing they know some lawyer came by with paperwork that gave them the apartment and flushed them with extra cash, too.

(That’s another thing Derrick was good for, what he’d always been good for — extra cash. Sometimes Travis thinks the guy bought their loyalty, but he thinks, too, that Derrick really did believe in him and his art like he always said, but then push come to shove he’d throw it all under the bus if he had to. And he _did_ , so Travis is probably right about all that. Maybe the apartment and the money’s some attempt to make amends, or just so Derrick can pretend he was still the good guy, at the end of it all.

(But Jones told him it wasn’t worth all this thinking, just like the rest of it, so he tries not to.)

He tugs at one end of his scarf, tosses it over his shoulder and out of the way. Lifts the camera to his eye, just to see what he’ll find on the other end of the lens — and it’s the frog, is what it is. Travis adjusts the focus, watches its murky evergreen body inflate with a ribbit. He hopes no one steps on it.

No one does, as it happens, because next thing he knows a pair of hands comes into view. Travis peers over the top of his camera just in time to see that too-pretty girl mid-crouch, coaxing the frog into her cupped palms. Her ponytail’s drooped down to puddle in the crook of her shoulder, a few tendrils snaking down lower to tease her neckline; that’s drooped down, too, gaping open and offering him one hell of a view of the shadows that paint her collarbones.

_Jesus._ He swallows.

He doesn’t wanna stare down her shirt like some whacko perv, so he shakes it off. Or, tries to.

He ducks back behind the lens, zooms in on the frog and snaps. The shutter clicks a few more times while he’s at it, catching each one of the hobbled hops the frog takes until he’s nestled in the concave slope of the girl’s hands.

Pale hands, with rough patches on the fingers and chipped blue polish on her nails. The sleeve of her jacket’s bunched up, and she’s got freckles on her left wrist and a stack of colorful bracelets. Green and yellow plastic beads, brown leather straps tied in knots around the middle, a watch that looks straight out of your granddad’s dresser, a dark red scrunchie…

He changes the camera’s angle, snaps a couple more. She bites her fingernails, he can tell; she favors the index and middle of her right hand. She’s got a ring on the index, too, a piece of sterling silver bent in the shape of a cross.

He zooms in closer on that — there’s a misshapen circle of discolored skin right above that ring, like she’d burned her finger and didn’t take care of it soon enough after — quick as he can. Steady, because she’s walking, taking the little green frog someplace he’s not like to get trampled, which —

Shit. Which happens to be that ugly granite fountain behind him.

He drops the camera in his lap, the blow muffled by his coat, just as she steps over the wall next to him. Her jacket flaps around her thighs as she walks, as Travis cranes a look over his shoulder to watch her go. It’s not _far_ to go before she sets the frog on the lip of the fountain, where it ribbits once like it’s saying thanks, and then splashes into the water with a little _plip!_ to announce its descent.

She wipes her palms on her pockets and Travis keeps his in his lap. His fingers twitch against his camera, but he doesn’t pick it up again. He can’t go snapping her picture now that he hasn’t got the frog for an excuse, even if it is only her hands.

It’s another second before she must be satisfied that the frog’s going to stay put, and then she’s turning around. Her eyes aren’t downcast now, so Travis shouldn’t be surprised when they snag on his.

_Shouldn’t_ be, but it makes him flinch, anyways. Does she think he was staring at her this whole time? He sort of was, yeah, but he doesn’t want her to _know that_. It’s _weird_ , Christ, he’s so fucking weird, isn’t he, for all his thinking he never seems to manage to think about that before it’s too late, before he messes up and he hasn’t even opened his mouth this time, for Pete’s fucking _sake_ —

“Hi.”

What? Travis blinks, takes a look around, but — oh. Okay. She’s talking to _him_.

“Uh” — what’s he supposed to say, fuck — “h-hey.”

She snaps one of her bracelets, then shoves her hands in her pockets like she’s trying to curb a nervous habit. Travis has got a couple of those himself, mostly fidgeting or touching his face, and that second one’s a real bitch during flu season, so he tries to curb them, too, so long as he realizes he’s doing it. It’s partly why he likes to keep his hands busy with art — photos, camcorder, sketchpad, whichever. Maybe that’s why this girl scooped up that frog, maybe she’s just gotta _do_ something.

The breeze picks up, snatches at a few of her flyaways and pulls. Her eyes dart down to her shoes, boots worn and scuffed-up from use, but she’s still talking to him even if she can’t look at him more than a moment. He’s not sure if that’s a good sign or bad or if it’s a sign of anything at all. Most people don’t try to talk to him long enough to tell, but. Well. Here she is. 

“I didn’t want anyone to step on him,” she explains, like she knows he wondered about that, even for just a second. She unearths a hand — the one with the ring and the little pink spot — to hook her thumb over her shoulder, towards the fountain. “I don’t think they’d do it on purpose, but, y’know. He’s real small.”

“R-right.” Travis clears his throat, swallows again so maybe he can get a handle on that stutter. She’s got a pretty voice, too, go figure. High and sweet and southern — she’s definitely not from around the northeast, but loads of people come to school out here, so that’s not unexpected. “That’s, yeah. Nice of you.”

She shrugs, sticks the tip of one chipped blue nail in her mouth and nibbles. Probably why the polish is so chipped to start with. “I like animals.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he nods because that’s all he’s got. He’d only ever really been good at talking to Jones and Derrick, because they always tended to do most of the talking in the first place, and even then he tripped over what he wanted to say a time or two or several. Put a pretty girl in front of him and, well, you can forget about it. He strikes out every time.

It’s looking like a hot streak towards that same end right about now, unless he gets any bright ideas that won’t make her wildly uncomfortable or otherwise wish she hadn’t struck up conversation at all. Would’ve been easy enough for her to ignore him, to avert her gaze and go back the way she came. But she didn’t. She’d gone and said hello, and it’s just that Travis hasn’t been able to pick up any steam after that.

‘Course not. Great.

He palms the camera, turns it over and over in his hands, just as he’s turning over his thoughts to see what he can find to say out loud. He hasn’t got a thing, but he doesn’t want her to walk away yet, either, if she’s willing to stick around, so he gives it a shot. “So, uh…”

Well. He didn’t say it was a _good_ shot.

She takes pity on him. Must, because she’s the one to edge out the next wave of ensuing silence. “I’m Beth.”

_Beth._ Right. Okay. Pretty just like the rest of her.

“Ah — Travis.” He lifts two fingers, peeking out from the ragged edges of his fingerless gloves, in a sorry excuse for a wave, then drops them to scratch the back of his neck. Grimaces a little. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, I think — your roommate, Jones, she’s friends with my RA?” Beth ventures. “Naomi?”

“Yeah, sort of.” It really is _sort of_ , but Jones is better friends with Naomi than Travis is, that’s for sure. He thinks it’s a girl thing, one that he kind of understands and kind of doesn’t, but he does enough not to pry. It’s not like any of them _want_ to talk about Derrick. “She goes over there sometimes.”

“I’ve seen you over a couple times, too.”

Has she, now? Travis hadn’t noticed. But it _is_ a girls’ dorm — a holdover from the school’s early days, one that stuck around because some parents are conservative enough that they don’t want the coeds sleeping under one roof if they can help it. Not like it stops anybody from fucking, but, whatever, he guesses they _tried_ for logic, at least — and he doesn’t go poking around the halls or anything. He only comes by when he needs to meet Jones after class, or when Naomi borrowed his camcorder for a journalism project. It’s not much in the way of habit, is what he’s saying.

“Couple times, yeah,” Travis agrees. “For school stuff, you know.”

She nods, tucks some of those stray hairs behind her ears just for the breeze to kick them out again. His fingers itch to pick up his camera, not to fiddle with it anymore, but to _use_ it on something other than snapshots of her hands. Or maybe more of her hands, as her fingers keep up running through her hair and he wants to track their progress. He’s probably got enough of those already, though, but he’ll have to see how they turn out.

Is there — is there a not-weird way to ask her if he can take her picture? Truth is, _he_ doesn’t think it’s that weird, it’s just art, simple as that, but he’s got to consider how that sort of thing sounds to other people. Normal people. People who don’t have their brain on all the time, always after something or other, wiping him out but it keeps him going, too. Only that doesn’t usually make sense to most people, and maybe it’s because he can’t explain it so well — he’s never been able to articulate it — and whenever he’s tried the only thing that keeps him from sounding completely up-his-own-ass pretentious is the fact that he trips over every word, and ends every other sentence with an _I don’t know_ and then he just drops the subject because why bother, right?

But. Yeah. Anyway.

He taps agitated fingertips against his camera and decides that, no, there’s probably _not_ a not-weird way to ask her. He’s only just learned her name, and that she’ll swoop in for the sake of a frog if she needs to. That’s not really enough to know before you can ask someone for their picture without sounding like a pervert or a serial killer or some other kind of asshole from a Lifetime movie.

He doesn’t wanna be that guy. Doesn’t wanna come close.

“Shoot.” Beth checks her watch, sucks her bottom lip between her teeth for a second and Travis feels like he just got punched in the gut. “I gotta go, I’m gonna be late —”

“Who’ve you got next?” he wants to know. It’s not very well any of his damn business, but of course now would be the time he can unstick his throat long enough to talk to her.

“Goodwin.”

“Ah — yeah.” One corner of his mouth tilts up. “Probably should go, or he’s gonna pick on you the whole period.”

“That’s what I hear, yeah.” She pushes her hair back, hitches her bag higher up on her shoulder as she scales the wall for the now frog-less pathway. “Sounds like a nightmare.”

“Can be, if you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, well, even still…” Beth trails off, like she doesn’t want to go saying too much. She shakes it off, though. Smiles at him, and it even almost sparks something in her eyes. “Anyway. It was nice meetin’ you.”

“Yeah, and, uh.” Travis gestures her way. Doesn’t know why, just that he’s got to move his hands. “You, too.”

Her smile twitches up some more. She spins on her heel, poised to head off to the lecture hall he just left a scant twenty-or-so minutes ago, loose ponytail swinging. “See you around.”

“Right, I’ll — keep an eye out for frogs.”

Soon as the words are out, he winces. Fuck, what’d he go and say that for? Is he trying to be clever? He’s _not_ clever, not like that, not in some smooth flirtatious way, God damn it, he needs to _remember_ this shit —

But then, _then_ she giggles. Laughs. High and bright like her voice, soaked through with honey, and it’s short, just a burst of it, but the wind picks it up and lets it linger.

“‘Preciate it.” She waves, boots scuffing the pavement as she goes. “Bye, Travis.”

“Bye,” he says, though he thinks his throat stuck a little too long again for her to catch it.

Damn, he could go for a cigarette. He chain-smoked through a whole pack last night when he couldn’t sleep again, so he’ll have to stop by the bodega or something on his way home. A few hits of nicotine’s all that’s gonna help him settle now. 

In the meantime…

Beth’s just about to disappear into the shadows of the communication building’s archway, and Travis — alright, he can’t help himself. Just one, he thinks. Just one more picture, just to get that swing of her hair, and if later Jones tells him it’s a weird thing to do, if it’s too much, he’ll pitch everything he’s got and he’ll keep his eyes to himself from here on out, but _in the meantime_ —

He focuses up, right in on that neat braid cinched with a hot pink rubber band, tied into the restless waves of her ponytail, and clicks. The sun’s peeking out through the clouds, and catches on the ends of her hair while the rest of her’s bathed in cool sandstone shadow.

He’ll have to develop it to know for sure, but Travis thinks — he’s got that _feeling_ , the one he gets when he does something right, and he thinks he’s gonna like the look of this one.

Christ. He crosses himself, and prays to high heaven that Jones won’t tell him that it’s weird.


	2. all candor and style in the crook of your smile

“It’s not weird.”

A relieved breath kicks out of Travis’s lungs when Jones says that. She stacks the photographs she’d just finished thumbing through and sets them on his desk. The one on top’s the first one he snapped, when the frog took its initial hesitant hop into Beth’s hands. The sun caught her ring then, and the shine winks out from the glossy image.

He scratches his temple. “You don’t think so?”

“Well…” Jones tilts her head a bit, the way she does when she’s got to think it over. “What are you going to do with them?”

“I —” He splutters for a second at the implication, then huffs when her mouth quirks up into a grin. She’s teasing. Sometimes it takes him a minute before he gets that.

“Shut up,” he mutters, and restacks the photos because she hadn’t done it neat enough, and he doesn’t really want to look at her right now, besides. “I told you, I wasn’t — I didn’t think about it at first. I just wanted…”

“To take her picture,” Jones supplies when he falters. “For class, or just because?”

Travis ruffles a hand through his hair. He could probably go for a trim, but it doesn’t seem all that important, seeing as how he can’t remember it long enough to actually do what he needs about it. Not like it matters right now, but he’s getting flustered and that’s when he tends to think about stupid shit for no reason other than he needs the distraction.

No escaping this conversation, though; he’s the one who started it, even if he’s regretting it more and more every second.

“See, you do think it’s weird.”

“That’s not what I said.” Jones presses her lips together, another thing she does when she’s _thinking_. Travis wishes she wouldn’t; he’s anxious enough without her needing all this time to _mull it over_. “But — well. It might be strange if you kept this up for your own personal collection and never told her about it.”

She tilts her head again, the other way this time. “Secrets don’t make friends, you know.”

Another huff because, yeah, he knows. Secrets and bullshit, it never did them too many favors. He doesn’t see what that’s got to do with Beth — or, at least, not exactly. But maybe Jones doesn’t mean it _exactly_ , just a general observation, which is really more than enough all on its own. Because he knew it might be weird, right? He _knew_ that, and he’d just been hoping that Jones would tell him otherwise.

And she had. Sort of. At first. Now she’s backtracking, or she needs a little more from him before she can definitively decide whether she’s got to stage some sort of intervention, maybe take his camera away for a couple weeks or something.

“I’ve got that project for Carter’s class,” he says at length. He fidgets with the photos, notes that he’s going to have to develop a fresh batch if he gets his fingerprints all over this one. “Six weeks, one subject. I was thinking, maybe I could ask her.”

“To what?” He’s still not looking at her, but he _knows_ Jones is teasing now, can hear it in her voice, needling him the way you would a younger sibling. “To be your muse?”

_Muse._ Yeah, he’d used that word for Beth, too, so he supposes it suits.

Travis shrugs, mumbles, “Sort of, I guess. Why?” He spares Jones a glance, finds her looking contemplative but like she’s ready to laugh at him, too. That tracks. “Do y’think she’d say no? Think I’m a freak or something?”

“No.” Jones rolls her eyes. “Come on, Travis, don’t talk about yourself like that. I’ve told you before, this whole starving artist thing you’ve got going, girls like that.”

“Not starving so much these days,” Travis points out. He cuts a look around the room, around the sprawling apartment that’s theirs and they haven’t got to do a thing for it. He sticks a cigarette in his mouth but doesn’t light it; he just needs something to chew on. “That bother you at all?”

“What bothers me is how much it bothers _you_ ,” Jones says, a variation of the same old thing she’s told him before. “We don’t owe Derrick anything, you know that. Now do you want to talk about that again, or do you want my advice on how to go on and talk to a girl?”

His mouth twitches around the cigarette. Well, if she’s gonna put it like _that_ … “Second one, I guess.”

“Good.” Jones is back to grinning. She leans forward, elbows on her knees. “So you’re not a _starving_ artist anymore, but you’re sure mopey enough to pass.”

“Thanks.”

“Look, my point is, so you’ve been shot down a few times, but you’re not trying to pick this girl up,” Jones says, all reasonable-like. “Okay, so you could argue that taking a portfolio’s worth of pictures of someone is maybe a little more intimate than sleeping with them, even if it is for an assignment, but…” She sits back, twirls a hand. “Lots of girls would think it’s romantic.”

He squints at her. “Yeah?”

“Beth seems like she would, anyway. And if she’s not, well” — Jones lifts the hand she’d twirled, shrugs — “she’s not a bitch, either. She’s not going to tell you to get lost just because it takes you ten minutes to actually ask her if she’ll pose for you on a regular basis for a month. Of course that’s going to make you nervous, she’ll be patient with you.”

Put like that, it sounds like one hell of a tall order, and _he_ sounds like an idiot. Travis tips his head back to groan at the ceiling, swipes a hand down his face. “Christ.”

“You’re shy, that’s not a big deal.”

“History might suggest otherwise.”

“It’s like I said, Beth’s not a bitch. Unless you give her a reason,” Jones adds, “but then it doesn’t really count, does it?”

“What kind of reason?” Travis wants to know. _Needs_ to know, really, if he doesn’t want to go insulting her or accidentally propositioning her. And it _would_ be an accident, no matter how much he might actually like to proposition her, because he’s no good at that shit and he really would come across as a creep if he tried.

“Don’t grab her ass and then try to tell her it’s a compliment.”

“That’s specific.”

“A universal experience,” Jones amends. “And one of Beau’s friends did it to her the other day.”

_What?_ Travis’s jaw tenses up. “Which one?”

“Why, what are you going to do, kick his ass?” Jones chuckles. And, alright, so no, he’s not much for kicking anybody’s ass, but he could _try_. “Besides, she can take care of herself. It was a shame to waste good coffee, but when Naomi tried to pay her back she said it was cold, anyway. Lucky for Bruce.”

Yeah, well. Travis hunches over his photos again, flips through them as he pictures those hands throwing some day-old cream-and-sugar latte — or something like it, Beth seems like the type for cream and sugar, or maybe tea (sweet tea? She is southern, after all) — in some asshole’s face. He bets the styrofoam cup was pinpricked with the crooked crescent moon indents of her nails.

“He deserved hot coffee,” he grumbles.

Jones hums. “Most men do.”

“So what makes me different, then?”

“You’re not going to grope her unless she asks. And even then…” She lifts both hands this time, angles them from side to side as her face bunches into an expression of the utmost dubiousness. “Jury’s out.”

Travis snorts. Yeah, he’s not about to argue that. He’s not some suave lothario who just dives in soon as he’s got the go-ahead, for one thing. He’s not going to pretend he’d do anything but stammer and shake if he actually got a shot with this girl. Sure, he knows the technicalities of what to do, he’s got at least a couple practice runs under his belt, but he’s not totally out of touch enough to believe that the _technicalities_ cut it. He knows human anatomy, for one thing, and for another he’s heard more than he would’ve liked when Jones and Sheila and occasionally Naomi start in on it, too, when they have a couple cosmos and really get going about how most guys aren’t worth the hook-up.

(Derrick would go on about it, too, usually when Jones wasn’t around because he said sometimes it was guy talk and he knew how overwhelmed Travis could get if he heard too much from too many sides. He was always ready to take Travis under his wing and help him out when he could, back then. And that’s not something Travis can just up and forget, no matter how hard he tries — and he’s _tried_ , so much that sometimes it actually, physically hurts and he’s started popping ibuprofen like candy just to offset the headaches.

(Truth be told, though, these days he doesn’t know how much of that advice was worthwhile. Regardless of how technically correct or good-natured or… whatever you want to call it, it’s just. _Just._ How much of Derrick’s word can be trusted at this point? Not enough for Travis to be comfortable taking it at nothing _but_ anymore, that’s for sure.)

But that’s not the point. Whether or not he gets laid here isn’t his objective at the moment. He’s got a portfolio to hand in, and a snapshot of Beth’s ponytail that’s especially promising, and that’s what he needs to be focused on right now.

He flicks to that picture now, the one he took that he’s not so sure he should have taken, but he can’t be totally pissed at himself about doing it, either. Because it’s _good_ , and it’s made him want to take so many pictures of her in a way that, it just… it _aches_.

In several places, actually, but he’s trying to keep it to his upstairs brain here. (The ibuprofen hasn’t helped any in this regard, though, go figure.)

Stark contrast. Bright jewel tones brought out even brighter by the dim shadows of the communications building — the yellow in Beth’s hair, the neon of that rubber band holding her braid together, the blue of her jacket and the turquoise strap of her bag.

Her head had turned just slightly to the left, so there’s a sliver of her profile, the upward swoosh of her eyelashes, the barest tilt of her lips — pink, so pink, unbearably pink, caught up in a dark blush color as she stepped out from the overcast sky and into the cooler confines of the building. Not far enough for the sun not to catch her, though — no, it’s there, it streams through her hair, painting the curves of her braid and the split-ends that tickle the middle of her spine. It’s like bursts of sunspots captured by her hair, like they fell into her hands and she put them there on purpose.

So, okay. Yeah. So he wants to ask her if she’ll be his _muse_ — not in so many words, but more or less just like Jones said. Maybe that should make him feel like a hack, but honestly he can’t be bothered with self-deprecation for once. It’s how he gets whenever he’s got a project going — too deeply entrenched in the idea, the process, the God damn _art_ of it all, that not even his own lack of self-esteem can deter him.

“Travis,” Jones says, breaking him out of the internal tailspin he’s so wont to fall into. She’s looking at him, all cocked head and raised eyebrows, like she knows what he’s thinking but she’s not going to say anything about it unless _he_ does.

He’s not going to. Not this time, not until he's got a better handle on it for himself, so he just says “Hm?” instead.

“Just ask her.” Chair wheels spin around the floor as Jones alights from her seat, because she's said what she needs to and now it’s up to Travis to act on it. He’s an _adult_ , after all, for Christ’s sake. “I can hear you overthinking it. Just do it, alright? It’s not going to be as big a deal as you think. Promise.”

She gives him a wink and a pair of finger guns, so he guesses she believes what she says, and that does put him a little more at ease.

“Yeah.” Travis sets the photo aside. He wants to develop it in black-and-white next, see how those sunspots spark when they haven’t got as much color to work with. “Yeah, I — I guess I will. Thanks, Jones.”

“Sure, anytime.” She takes her leave then, or almost does, before she pauses at the door, where she casts him one more look over her shoulder. “She’s a good one, you know. Beth. I can tell, and I think you can, too. Don’t psych yourself out, okay?”

He swallows. Nods, even as he pretends to be too engrossed with his computer to pay her much mind now that she’s on her way out. Doesn’t help matters much that he’s uploaded a photo of Beth’s hands to his screen, one of those he took when the frog was nestled comfortably in her calloused palms. Not too rough, but he can pick out the patches all the same, and he wonders how they got there.

“Yeah,” he says again, because maybe he sounds like a broken record but at least it’s easy. “I’ll, uh. I’ll try.”

And he will, really, because it’s not like he wants to trip up every time Beth crosses his path, let alone his mind. If that’s how it goes, well, then he’s not going to get any work done, particularly not on this project, whether he asks for her help with it or he chickens out.

But he doesn’t want to do that, either, he thinks, as he flips to a fresh page in his sketchbook. He picks out one of the charcoal pencils that’s scattered across his desk, zooms in on the bracelets on Beth’s left wrist, and thinks some more — no, he doesn’t want to chicken out on this girl at all.

* * *

It takes him a couple days. Just a couple, because every time he doesn’t go for it he kicks his own ass right up until he doesn’t do it all over again, and by the fourth time around he’s had quite enough of that.

But since he only ever sees her on Tuesdays and Thursdays, it’s almost two weeks of this shit before he gets sick of it. Not to mention he’s got a deadline on this assignment; it’s not due until the end of the semester, sure, but he’s still got to clock in six weeks’ worth of work, minimum. He can’t afford to drag his feet on this, especially if Beth says no and never speaks to him again, and then he’d have to start from scratch while nursing a bruised ego. Maybe even a bit of a broken heart, but that sounds too macabre for him to dwell on, so he doesn’t.

It’s not that big of a school. He probably could've found her at the cantina or the coffee shop or the library, someplace, but he spent an entire evening weighing the statistical probability of that and decided that, if he didn’t want to drop dead of sheer frustration, he might as well wait it out ‘til Thursday.

Naturally, _this_ Thursday happens to be the one where Goodwin canceled all his classes because he has a weekend conference to get to. Travis wonders whether Jones will mysteriously disappear for a couple days, too. It’s a year-old rumor, the thing about her and Goodwin, and she hasn’t said anything, but Travis gets the feeling it’s not gossip so much these days.

Well, whatever. After everything, he couldn’t blame her for putting a moratorium on dating her peers, and it’s not like she’s taking any of Goodwin’s classes this year, so, whatever she’s gotta do, it’s not really his business. He’s just saying, if she splits for a few days and comes back to find all the Midori gone again, that’s her own fault.

Before he can get drunk off absurdly sweet liqueur, though, Travis has to hedge his bets and see if Beth’s hanging around the communications building, class notwithstanding. If she’s a creature of habit — and he sort of gets that impression, but that could just be his own hopeful streak talking — maybe she’ll be there on impulse or something.

And — thank Christ, Travis goes crossing himself again, has a feeling this girl’s gonna get him doing that a lot more than his lapsed Catholic ass is used to lately — she is. Whether she’s there out of habit or not, he doesn’t know, but she’s perched on the same wall he’d been when she saved that frog and he’d become irrevocably obsessed with her hands.

He homes in on those hands now, splotched with ink as she scribbles in a journal, balanced on her knees, with what looks like a half-busted pen. Must be, there’s smears of black everywhere. The styrofoam cup of coffee next to her is marked up with inky fingerprints, too. Looks the way his hands usually do.

He’s glad he had the foresight to bring his camera along. He’ll toss whatever he takes if she turns him down, but he’s got to get this. Shit like this was made for black-and-white, and if all goes well he’ll be pissed if he didn’t take the chance.

So he does, snaps a few from across the walkway. She doesn’t so much as twitch, doesn’t glance up when he switches the angle. Doesn’t seem to hear the click of the shutter over whatever's going on in her head, and he lets himself wonder what that is.

Doesn’t come up with anything much, but he wonders just the same.

She’s right-handed, and the fingers of her left are crooked over the opposite page, fingerprints pressed into the paper to keep the wind from catching them. She’s wearing gloves — fingerless like his, but they cover enough that he can’t tell if she’s got that ring or her bracelets on. He’s seen the bracelets, at least, more times than not in passing, when she walked by and adjusted the strap of her bag, or tucked some of that hair behind her ear. He noticed them, just never _took note_ until now.

The watch and scrunchie are there, even if the beads and leather straps aren’t, nestled against one end of her left glove, bunching it up some. There’s an ink spot on the scrunchie. That makes him want to develop a couple of these in color, too.

Even with the zoom, he’d rather have a close-up — several of them, a whole roll of film’s worth — and that’s enough to get his ass in gear, to get his feet eating up the space between them so he can talk to her.

The scuff of his shoes gets her looking up like the click of his camera didn’t, so she must not be _too_ caught up in her own thoughts. He’s relieved that he didn’t disturb her, because that would’ve made him feel like even more of a jackass than he already does.

She brushes the loose hair from her face, where it had stuck to her lips that’re lifting up into a grin when she sees him. _That’s_ a surprise, and it’s got the blood flowing up to heat his cheeks and down to cause some potentially major issues in his pants, so that’s… great.

Jesus, she’s got a pretty smile.

“Hey,” he says, before he can say anything worse.

“Hey,” she says back, and even that sounds better coming from her than it does him. She caps her pen — definitely busted, but still workable — and flips her notebook shut with a twitch of her knee. “What’s up?”

She’s still smiling. That’s probably good news for him, even if his dick’s taking things a little too far. He’s not — Christ, he’s not _hard_ or anything, just because she’s smiling at him, but his muscles are all seized up like he’s just waiting for this to either blow up in his face or work out in a way that’s usually reserved for sexual fantasy. Or, y’know, bad porn. Whichever.

“Nothing, really.” He braces one foot on the wall next to her, not too close because he’s not sure she’d like that and frankly he probably couldn’t handle _too close_ with her. He fiddles with the camera’s focus, just to give himself something to concentrate on that’s not the nervous nauseous feeling stirring in his gut. “You, uh, having a good break from Goodwin’s class?”

“Gosh, yeah, kinda.” She giggles a little bit. Her cheeks are pink, and Travis has this fleeting ridiculous thought that maybe he’s making her just as nervous as she makes him. “He’s got, um. A big personality.”

“Yeah, he’s kind of a dick sometimes. Sorry,” Travis adds, tripping over the apology in his haste to say it. Jesus, is he seriously messing this up already? “He’s a good teacher and all” — a good accomplice, too — “but, yeah, I get what you mean.”

“I get what you mean, too.” Beth’s fingertips shuffle the edges of her journal’s pages, and his continue to fiddle with the knobs on his camera. “How about you? Good day?”

“It’s been alright.” Yeah, _alright_ about covers it. Better since he’s got to see her, but worse, too, because he has to talk to her and he’s really, _really_ bad at talking. Case in point, right goddamn now. “I actually — it’s nice to see you again.”

Oh, for goddamn Christ’s sake, is he for real?

Beth doesn’t seem to be thinking along those same lines, though, so Travis probably ought to start going back to church and thanking the good Lord when she smiles at him again, when her cheeks flare up even more pink. “Yeah, it’s nice talkin’ to you again. Sorry I had to run off last time.”

He shrugs, the casual gesture belying the rapid pick-up of his heart. What, would she’ve rather stuck around to talk to him a couple weeks ago? He’s seen her a few times since, and instead of walking past with her head down she’s been shooting him a grin and a wave and a hi, but it’s always in passing so he can manage a _hey_ , too, without making a complete ass of himself. But the first (and last) time they’d actually spoken, he’d barely gotten a word out, if you ask him. He wouldn’t have blamed her for running off, class or no, he’d been such a painfully awkward drag. Or so he thought, anyway, but apparently Beth would disagree.

She’s still smiling when she picks up her ink-blotched styrofoam cup, which reminds him…

“You’re not gonna throw that on me, are you?”

Beth pauses. Wrinkles her nose, and hell if that’s not the cutest shit he’s ever seen. “Did Jones tell you about that?”

He nods. Smiles a bit. “Sounds like he deserved it.”

“He _did_ ,” she agrees, then huffs and nibbles at the edge of her cup. “Jerk.”

“That’s Bruce, yeah. Probably what you get for naming your kid _Bruce_ , actually. Y’know.” He shrugs again, one shoulder this time, thumbs toying less agitatedly and more idly with his camera now. He’s getting used to the conversation, settling in. “Unless your kid’s Bruce Wayne, I guess.”

“Well, Batman better mind his manners, too. He ain’t no exception.”

“You gonna throw coffee on him, too?”

“Green tea,” Beth corrects him, with the lip of the cup between her own as she takes a drink. “But, yeah, I would.”

Ah, fuck. He really likes this girl.

Maybe that’s premature, Travis doesn’t really know, but he _does_ know he likes her and that’s enough of a panic without worrying over whether he’s gotten in too deep too soon. He’s already got to worry about asking if he can take her picture, repeatedly, and maybe sketch her, and if all goes well maybe — and that’s a hard _maybe_ — he’d get around to asking her out or just lose his head completely and kiss her sometime.

So. Yeah. He’s worried enough as it is, thanks.

“Hey.” There’s a crinkle between Beth’s eyebrows, mouth tilted in a frown. Not like she’s upset, but like she’s… also worried? About him? That can’t be right. Except — “You okay? You’re lookin’ kinda anxious.”

“Uh. Yeah, I’m.” _An idiot._ “I’m — I wanted to ask you something.”

“I promise I’m not gonna throw my tea in your face.”

His laugh is genuine, but he _is_ anxious so it comes out stuttered, anyway. He takes a breath to try to settle it, but it’s no good and all of his words trip over the other when he starts talking because it’s now or never and he’s getting really sick of his own shit here, so here goes nothing.

“Actually, I — look, I’ve got this project. For Carter’s class?” He clutches his camera in one hand, and uses the other to scrub at the heat creeping up the back of his neck. “I don’t know if you’ve had her, but she’s real, y’know, breezy about her curriculum, so it’s pretty easy, just one subject for six weeks, whatever, and I was wondering if —” oh, fuck him “— if you might help me out with it?”

“Like…” Okay, she’s definitely blushing now. It makes him feel a little better, he thinks. “You want me to be your subject?”

He swallows. It hurts. “Yeah.”

“Really?” Beth blinks, surprised, like she thought she must’ve guessed wrong. “Why?”

“I just — you’re really —” This is hell. Actual, agonizing hell. So much for going back to church, because no way is he more than a lost cause at this point. “It started a couple weeks ago, with the frog, remember, and then —”

“So you’ve already taken my picture?” she interjects. He thinks she’s smiling, he can see it at the corners of her mouth, which he really shouldn’t be looking at right now since he just outed himself as a damn creep.

“Yeah, I. Uh. Shit.” _Why_ did he think he could do this, Christ, if the earth could just open up and take him. “Listen, I can toss them, I didn’t mean to — it was just the frog at first, but —”

“Travis.” Yeah, she’s smiling. She’s even laughing a little bit. “It’s okay.”

It is _not_. “Um.”

“I swear.” Beth swipes her forefinger over her heart, crossing it. “I mean, so long as you let me see them, otherwise I guess it’d be pretty weird.”

Yeah, that tracks with what Jones said, not to mention the usually MIA reasonable part of his brain. “‘Course you can, yeah, I wouldn’t… hide them from you, or anything. Shit, this is weird,” he adds, mostly to himself but it’s not like Beth wasn’t gonna hear it.

“No, it’s alright. _Really_ ,” she continues to reassure him, picking up on his grimace and apparently not standing for it. “You just surprised me, is all. But as long as you show me and none of ‘em are, y’know, pictures you took hiding in the bushes outside my dorm…” She shrugs. “Well, I know you ain’t like that.”

He’s _not_ like that, but honestly for all she knows he could be. It’s not like they know each other, so — “Are you sure?”

“That you’re not stalking me?” Beth asks.

“Well — no, not that,” Travis says. It’s chilly out, but his palms are sweaty in his gloves. “I’m not doing that. Just, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, I guess, but that train’s probably left the station by now.”

“Are you always this self-deprecating?”

“Yes.”

That makes her laugh, too. She’s got one of those smiles that changes her whole face, like no matter what she’s smiling about it lights her up from the inside out. She’s gotta know that, doesn’t she? It can’t be all that surprising that he wants to take her picture.

“Well, I think Naomi and your friend Jones are pretty good judges of character,” she says, “so I’m gonna go ahead and have a little faith about you.”

Naomi and Jones? There’s a scramble in Travis’s brain as he tries to keep up, but his brain’s not liking the sound of that so it’s just not computing.

“Did they say something?” he wants to know. _Doesn’t_ want to know, but needs to for the sake of his own sanity. Jesus. He could really go for a cigarette right about now. Or a Xanax.

Beth’s still sort of laughing at him. Not like gut-busting kinda laughter, but it’s dancing around the edges of her lips and sparking up pretty in her eyes, and even though he’s diving headfirst into an internal spiral, something about that look on her face calms him down.

He is _so_ screwed. 

“A couple things,” she tells him, but that’s too vague to actually _tell him_ anything.

“Like — _what_?”

“Like you’re real sweet and smart and sometimes kind of a doofus.”

No way Jones called him a _doofus_. A dumbass, yeah, for sure, but then again Beth doesn’t strike him as the type to talk real crass or anything. So. Doofus it is.

Travis raises his eyes to the overcast sky, because if the ground’s not gonna open up and swallow him, well, he can always pray for a lightning strike.

“Super,” he deadpans.

“I thought so,” Beth chirps, like she knows he’s being self-deprecating again but she’s chosen to ignore it. Which, yeah. Probably easier that way. She stuffs her notebook into her bag and shoulders it, takes another swig off her tea as she stands up. Her elbow bumps his knee when she does it; he’s just lucky she doesn’t notice his subsequent muscle spasm. “You got anything you’re doin’ now, or can I see those pictures?”

“Um.” He straightens up, too, shakes out his foot because it had started falling asleep but he hadn’t noticed ‘til he stood on it. Too caught up in Beth to bother keeping his blood flow in check, and anyway most of it was in his face, the tips of his ears, or traveling way too below the belt for comfort. “Now’s good, yeah, if you want.”

“I do.”

Okay, well, far be it from him to deny this girl whatever she wants. Travis nods, smiles because he sort of can’t help it and his nerves are jangling and he’s trying to look on the bright side here, because she said yes and she doesn’t think he’s some weirdo and it seems like she likes teasing him and he thinks that she could’ve been flirting and maybe if he can get his head on straight he can start thinking about the possibility that she could like him, too, so long as he just… keeps on being a doofus, he guesses. That’s probably his natural state of being, so, easy enough.

“Okay, well, I’ve got everything back at the apartment, if you wanna —”

“I do,” Beth says again. She tugs at his sleeve, fingers bumping his and, _God_ , he wants to hold her hand. “C’mon, I don’t know where we’re goin’, lead the way.”

“It’s sort of a long walk —”

“I grew up on a farm, it was a long walk to the mailbox.” Beth pulls at his sleeve and starts walking them the way he came, because maybe she doesn’t know where they’re going but she does know how to get off campus, so she must figure that’s good enough for now. “I don’t mind.”

“You sure you don’t want to Uber or something?” he asks. Just wants to make sure.

Beth rolls her eyes. “No way. I like walking.”

She’s still got the edge of his sleeve caught between her fingers and Travis is pretty sure he’s died and gone to heaven, actually, because this sure doesn’t feel like hell anymore.

“Okay.” He falls into step beside her so she doesn’t have to keep pulling, but she keeps her hand where it is and he’s gonna keep his bumbling mouth shut about it. “I like walking, too, yeah.”

She smiles at him. He thinks he’ll ask if he can get a couple snapshots of her on the way; it’s twenty minutes to the loft on foot, though, so he’s got time.

“Good,” Beth says, pleased, and then — “Y’know what, Travis, I think this is gonna be kinda fun.”

Yeah. Travis smiles back at her, because — so long as the nausea doesn’t take over and make him vomit up his nerves at her feet, God willing — he thinks so, too.


End file.
